


Samisen

by Kantayra



Category: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers | Ronin Warriors
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dais and Anubis, amidst games and illusions, uncover the hidden truth that has governed their actions from the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Samisen

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally written for spoke in Yuletide 2007. The original version used the YST names and can be found [here](http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/archive/42/samisen.html).

“I will always come for you.”

The first time Anubis spoke those words was in the gardens of Talpa’s palace when spring was just giving way to the cusp of summer, and the cherry blossoms were in bloom. The gentle breeze stirred the falling petals into swirls and eddies until the air was filled with their fragile dance, each a perfect warrior fallen in battle. Not even the Gates of Talpa’s realm nor the eternal, timeless mist that hung about them could bring a halt to this miraculous expression of life and death. The petals showed that Talpa’s powers were not infinite and that, even in this place, the tiniest bit of beauty could take root and flourish.

As did the two men in the clearing.

Dais stopped his playing, his fingers growing still on the strings of his samisen. One last, mournful note cried out through the storm of petals that surrounded them. “Then you are a fool,” he answered obliquely, fingering the fine silk strings, spun by the demon that dwelled within him now, comforting and terrifying all at once.

“Fine,” Anubis retorted with a hint of his usual impatience as he approached the tree that Dais sat beneath, “then I am a fool. I am still a fool at your service, however.”

Dais looked into that lovely, determined face. Anubis’ hair flew wildly about his head in the wind, the embodiment of fiery rage and passion. The spark of loyalty burned brightly in Anubis’ heart, and Dais still could not fathom that he’d earned a portion of that intense devotion for himself. That a creature so young and graceful should want _him_ was almost beyond comprehension. Dais had learned over the centuries never to trust so rare a stroke of good fortune. Just as the thousand glittering strands of a spider’s web lured in innocent prey with its architectural mastery, so too could an ambitious young man lure in an older one who would help him rise through the ranks of Talpa’s Warlords. Especially, Dais mused to himself more than a little critically, when that elder dwelled far enough outside the norm that no analogy he made could be complete without the judicious use of spiders.

“Sit,” Dais said instead. “I have something to show you.”

Anubis looked thrown by this offer, which brought a secretive smile to Dais’ lips. Ever since Anubis had joined Talpa’s army, he’d had his sights set on Dais. Unquestionably brilliant in battle and armed with unusual confidence for one so young, Anubis had made clear his next intended conquest from the start.

Dais knew how to look to the source of the web’s threads, however, to what lurked in waiting. In an army of four men and innumerable ghosts and spirits, those four men came to know each other only too well. Talpa exploited this to his advantage, as did they all.

 _“Anubis’ weakness,”_ Talpa had spoken to him that first day when the Warlords had awoken to find a new warrior in their midst, _“is his arrogance. I leave it to you to watch him, Dais. Teach him the patience you have mastered, and my army can never be defeated.”_

It was always difficult to tell with the wind and flickering flames that announced Talpa’s ghostly appearance, but Dais thought he detected a knowing laugh at the end.

 _“He is yours to…tame.”_

They were words that would haunt Dais for hundreds of sleepless nights to come. Visions of that lithe body twisted in ecstasy beneath him, of elegant aristocratic features thrown open and vulnerable with need, and that sharp mind finally compliant and eager for all of Dais’ whims – it was enough to drive any man to distraction.

It was also an advantage that anyone as cutthroat as Anubis couldn’t fail to avail himself of. Dais was to be Talpa’s spy on Anubis, and Anubis knew that Dais desired him. Any clever man would have seen the obvious manipulations needed to secure his power base. It was certainly what Dais would have done had the circumstances been reversed, and the fact that he and Anubis were so alike in this only made him ache for the other man all the more.

Dais wondered at times whether Talpa had given him the task of watching over Anubis both to test Anubis’ loyalty and to test Dais’ mental discipline at the same time. Dais had never indulged much in the pleasures of the flesh, both because his own desire for power had never left him with much time to do so and because, he was forced to admit, he was not the sort to attract young beauties. In exchange for supernatural powers and his mastery of illusions, Dais had given one eye and watched his hair bleach to an unearthly pale in mere moments. Sacrifices were necessary on the road to power, but Dais’ own sacrifices marked him as demon-touched and thus untouched by any of the young men who had caught his lone, wandering eye. He did not pity himself, for that was a mental lapse he could not afford, but it did leave him particularly vulnerable to Anubis’ forms of persuasion.

Years of resisting one so fair had taken their toll, and Dais felt his self-control on the verge of shattering. However, it was not in his nature to flee such temptation, but to face it head on, to force himself to resist and push himself to his utmost limits. It was a nasty game Talpa played, pitting Dais and Anubis against each other, but it was not one in which Dais would surrender lightly.

Anubis knelt on the grass before him now, so that they were eye-to-eye, their knees brushing and only Dais’ samisen separating them. The last note on the instrument’s strings died with the brush of Anubis’ tunic, and Dais couldn’t help but think that that was symbolic of quite a lot.

“You have been absent from the palace of late,” Anubis commented casually, a mischievous glint in the dark depths of his eyes. “One might almost suspect you were avoiding it.”

Dais let out an amused chuckle. “Has Talpa sent you to look after me now? Are we to chase each other in endless circles?”

The corners of Anubis lips quirked in amusement. “From what I’ve seen, I’ve been doing all the chasing, and you’ve been doing all the looking.” His left hand reached out and traced the neck of Dais’ samisen, long, elegant fingers stroking the instrument tenderly. On his upstroke, Dais thought that their fingers would brush, but Anubis stopped just shy of actual touch, a wicked smile on his face. Anubis was toying with him, of course, as he always did.

“You have kept quite the lonely chase, indeed,” Dais answered casually, as if the other man’s closeness didn’t affect him in the slightest. It was an obvious deception, of course. In the Dynasty, when so little was real and _solid_ , they all came to crave contact with other humans in a way that few of them had felt before. Even Kale, who kept to his own space the most of all of them, would occasionally offer the brush of a hand in compensation for the all-encompassing isolation of this place.

“The length of the chase doesn’t concern me,” Anubis retorted, “so long as victory is assured.”

He really was an impossibly haughty creature. Anubis suffered from the fault of having been the best at everything he’d ever put his mind to, and it had left him with an unnerving sense of his own infallibility. Dais could not imagine how Anubis would react when he finally failed at something. It wouldn’t be pretty, at the very least.

“Thoughts like that have brought armies to their knees,” Dais commented.

Anubis arched an eyebrow. “Are the two of us at war, then?” he inquired, looking up almost coyly from the curtain of his thick, auburn hair. Dais had dreams about that hair, so long and straight, twined about his fingers as he yanked Anubis’ mouth in to meet his. Anubis wielded his hair like a weapon, which was really enough of an answer to Anubis’ question in and of itself.

“We’re all at war. Talpa has seen to that.”

Anubis’ expression darkened. “Your words border on treason.” One could always count on Anubis to turn deadly serious at the notion of betrayal of their master.

“I merely comment on Talpa’s strategy,” Dais brushed the accusation aside. “He is hardly the first commander to pit his generals against one another to keep them all at their peak.”

Anubis’ eyes softened, and that devilish spark returned to his eyes. “Have I ever mentioned,” his voice purred, low and rough, under the latest gust of wind, “that your hair is the exact color of cherry blossoms.”

A pain struck Dais to the heart at that, because he wanted nothing more in the world than to capture Anubis’ mouth and body just then, and never surrender his prize. It was all part of the game, though, that Anubis played with him and Talpa played through Anubis. If there was one thing Dais knew, it was never to trust a beautiful mirage, and Anubis’ smile was just as alluring as an oasis was to a man crossing the desert.

Instead, he pulled on every bit of self control he’d ever taught himself and scoffed. “You’re attempting to make love to me,” he accused in the most bored voice he could manage.

Anubis hesitated for one moment, as if realizing for the first time that he might not get what he desired after all. He masked it well, however, and Dais felt his heart beat faster at the realization. Anubis was an exquisite liar; the Lord of Illusions couldn’t fail to be entranced.

“Attempting,” Anubis conceded with the slightest bow of his head. “Not succeeding, it would seem. Although the latter is your own loss.”

“I’ll suffer through it,” Dais retorted dryly. In truth, he knew he would suffer, indeed, from sleepless nights and wondrous dreams with ephemeral visions of Anubis’ body slipping through his fingers.

Anubis smiled, as though satisfied with this exchange, and sat back so that their knees no longer brushed. The assault, for the moment, was over. “You do play beautifully.” Anubis gestured to the samisen, but the compliment was neutral and genuine, and Dais felt no compunction about accepting it.

“It was a gift…” he began and then trailed off, because to tell the truth he couldn’t remember who it had been a gift from. The Dynasty granted them immortality, but in exchange it stripped away feelings and memories, peeling back the humanity of its inhabitants until nothing remained but cold, vengeful soldiers, ready and willing to carry out Talpa’s every command. At times, Dais wondered whether he’d made the right choice, accepting Talpa’s deal. The limits of his power were almost infinite, but there were days when the price seemed more than he could bear. Those days were bleeding together more and more of late, until he wondered whether he was irreparably damaged and some vital part of his being was gone. The only things that saved him now were little reminders that he did, indeed, live still. Reminders like the sweet tones of his samisen and the intricate strands of a spider’s web and the vivid thrum of Anubis’ pulse point against his tanned skin.

Anubis averted his eyes and nodded, because all four of them knew too well the sensation of their minds slowly trickling through their fingers. It was moments like these when Dais most mourned the fact that he and Anubis had to be rivals, because Dais felt a kinship with the other man in a way he’d rarely felt before. Kale was a savage fighter, full of power and precision, and Sekhmet brought deranged madness to the art of war. But Anubis… Anubis, Dais firmly believed, would be a clever fighter when he matured into his power, one who could match Dais wit for wit.

“Play for me?” Anubis requested, breaking them both from thoughts of the changes the Dynasty had wrought in their lives. It was an almost innocent request, and Dais wasn’t sure he could bring himself to refuse.

He strummed the bone pick over spider-spun strings once more, and the sound that emerged was unearthly and haunting. Anubis breathed, spellbound, and in this Dais knew Anubis didn’t deceive him. Dais may have been less than adequate when it came to physical charms, but even he knew it wasn’t false bravado to say that his playing was exquisite.

Anubis sat back, bracing himself up with his hands, his face tilted up to let the cherry blossoms brush his cheeks, and a serene smile upon his lips. The view he afforded Dais of the long line of his throat was breathtaking, and the notes that fell forth from Dais’ fingertips couldn’t help but ache with the same longing Dais felt.

“If I didn’t know better,” Anubis finally murmured softly, “I’d say you were now making love to me.”

Dais’ fingers stopped on a foul note, and his good eye narrowed. “Talpa sent you,” he accused, confident of his conclusions now.

Anubis looked almost sad that their moment of tranquility had passed, but he nodded nonetheless.

“What was your mission?” Dais practically growled. “To seduce me, of course, but to what end?”

Anubis gave him that smug, insufferable smile – the one that caused Sekhmet to rail for hours on end about how some day he was going to wipe it from Anubis’ arrogant face. “That’s between the Master and myself.” There was a tone of pride in his voice, that Anubis now knew the innermost layers of Talpa’s plans, details that had been denied to the rest of them. It was no secret that Anubis was fast becoming Talpa’s favorite; his brilliance in battle alone was enough to fill the rest of them with envy.

Anubis was trying to provoke him, and it wasn’t a bad attempt. This, however, was the arena in which Dais was the more skilled warrior. Mind over matter, subtle manipulations, until the prey was caught in an inescapable web… It spoke to Anubis’ bravado that he thought he could beat Dais on this playing field.

The game, of course, was touch. Dais didn’t delude himself that he could conceal his desire, only that he could resist it. Anubis had – probably correctly – inferred that once they touched, Dais was doomed to failure. Dais had known that it would come to this when he’d first invited Anubis to sit down, and threads of illusion spun about them almost subconsciously now. Dais’ power had become as natural and instinctive as breathing.

He slipped back into the safety of his illusions now. Anubis remained oblivious that his opponent now was nothing more than a carefully crafted doppelganger, so perfect a mimicry of Dais’ own form that Anubis didn’t even blink when the false Dais replaced the original.

A flicker in Dais’ consciousness sent his spirit form lunging for Anubis. Anubis, having invited this response on purpose, let himself fall. Dais felt a pang of jealousy as he watched his reflection straddle Anubis’ lean body, pinning him in place. Even with all these feet separating them, the urge to switch back in was nearly insurmountable. Anubis’ gambit had been far too close to the mark; had Dais tackled Anubis himself, he would have been lost.

Anubis flashed the doppelganger a toothy grin and rolled his hips. It didn’t even require conscious effort to make the illusion gasp in response; Dais himself had reacted that way.

Anubis took what he believed to be his advantage and rolled them over. There was a feral light in his eyes as he believed himself victorious, and he leaned in, his long, crimson hair curtaining the face of Dais’ proxy and concealing it from his watchful eye.

“Perhaps the chase is as an end?” Anubis’ voice rumbled roughly through his chest.

“Perhaps,” the doppelganger agreed. “But there is one thing you have forgotten.”

“Oh?” Anubis tilted his head to one side, studying the line of the illusion’s throat.

“You are not what you seem,” the illusion informed him.

Anubis smiled in agreement.

“But neither am I.” Dais spoke through his own lips, and with a wave of his hand, the illusion vanished.

Anubis started in surprise but, to his credit, zeroed in on Dais’ actual location almost immediately and fixed him with an icy glare.

Dais just smiled a tiny smile at his momentary victory. “How much was real and how much was illusion?” he asked Anubis patiently.

Anubis held his tongue, but his cheeks flushed at his defeat.

“Don’t be so quick to judge your victories, boy.” The last was particularly cruel and something Anubis could appreciate, given his armor’s affinity with that concept.

Anubis didn’t look any less furious. He did, however, look more determined than ever to unravel Dais’ secrets. “I will always come for you,” he promised.

Before, it had been a flirtation. Now, it was a threat.

Dais just laughed and extended his mind until innumerable cherry blossoms swept around Anubis, blocking his sight. Hidden in webs within webs, he left Anubis alone to ponder his defeat.

Dais knew that every victory cost him at a terrible price, however, for Anubis never failed to learn from experience, and Dais could feel himself closer to cracking with each passing day…

***

The night Talpa made Anubis the leader of his Warlords was the first night Anubis came to Dais.

“Come to gloat?” Dais inquired as casually as he could manage when he finally returned to his rooms that night to find Anubis perched on the corner of his bed, wearing an elegant green robe.

“I do have _some_ sense of my own mortality,” Anubis teased.

Anubis gave the impression that he knew exactly where Dais had been these past few hours and what had kept him so late. Of course, it wasn’t so difficult to guess. Sekhmet had been homicidal about being replaced by the young upstart, and Dais and Kale had spent long into the evening trying to calm his violent temper. For all Dais knew, Anubis might have heard Sekhmet’s ranting halfway across the castle.

“Why are you here, then?” Dais asked casually as he entered his bathroom. In reality, his heart had caught in his throat at the mere sight of Anubis on his bed. This game was clear enough, but Dais needed time to rebuild his control and, if he’d learned anything over the years, getting Anubis to talk would provide plenty of time to prepare for the upcoming confrontation.

“To celebrate, of course,” Anubis laughed. Through the reflection in the mirror, Dais could see that he’d fallen back on the bed.

“Celebrate?” Dais repeated carefully, tasting the word on his lips. “That implies that you’ve already won. In which case, you hardly need to keep up this little game of seduction.”

Anubis let out an undignified snort against Dais’ pillow. “You plot too much, old man.”

Dais winced. That one hurt.

“I don’t need you to rise to power anymore,” Anubis went on, oblivious. “I _have_ already won. I just want to celebrate now. Is that so hard to believe?”

Dais returned to the bedroom and studied Anubis speculatively where he lay back on Dais’ bed. The rest of the room was perfectly in order, except… Dais approached the empty bottle on the nightstand. The sickly sweet scent of sake wafted forth.

“You’re drunk?” he asked in disbelief.

Anubis just grinned madly up at him.

Dais shook his head. “You _do_ have a death wish,” he concluded.

“Would you kill me, then?” Anubis countered. “Do you desire power more than you desire me?”

“Only a fool would risk his life on another man’s desires.”

“We’ve already established that I’m a fool.” Anubis grinned. “You didn’t answer my question.”

It was all too much for Dais in that moment: Anubis, beautiful and powerful and too long just beyond his reach. Before he knew what he was doing, Dais had planted his hands on the mattress on either side of Anubis’ head. Their eyes met, and Dais could see the flicker of uncertainty on Anubis’ face.

“Tell me what you want from me,” Dais demanded, voice rough.

“Only what any general wants,” Anubis responded, a dreamy look in his eyes. “I want your loyalty, Dais. We all play a dangerous game, but if you and I joined forces…” Anubis met Dais’ stare head on. “We could rule the world.”

Subconsciously, Dais wetted his lips at the thought of all that power. Anubis’ gaze flicked down to Dais’ mouth, and he took in a sharp breath that almost made him look vulnerable. Their eyes met once more, and suddenly Dais couldn’t imagine why he’d resisted so long. Cautiously at first, he leaned in, and when Anubis showed no sign of resistance, he closed his good eye, reached out with his lips…

And was met with nothing but air.

Dais jerked up with a sudden start, watching in horrified disbelief as the threads of the illusion broke, a ruined spider’s web in the middle of his room. He staggered back with a shaky laugh and saw his room as it always had been: his bed empty, made, and unslept in. The phantom bottle of sake was also gone, and with it that all too real scent. It was perhaps the most clever, multi-sensory illusion Dais had ever created.

And it was all the more terrifying because he hadn’t even been aware that he’d created it.

Now that reality was revealed to him, of course, it was all too clear. Anubis was foolhardy, but never that mad and certainly not that compliant. No, the Anubis he’d met tonight was instead an Anubis that Dais could actually see himself accepting: a challenge but not a danger. In short, Dais’ greatest fantasy come to life.

A shiver passed through Dais’ body, and he slumped against the far wall. He’d known that the struggle was growing harder, that his discipline was wavering. But this was beyond anything he’d ever feared, even in his darkest moments. His own mind had run away from him; his powers were beyond his control.

And, if Dais didn’t have his illusions, he had nothing.

There was only one thing Dais could do. Frantically at first, but then with ever-increasing confidence, he gathered together his scant possessions: armor, weapons, a few books, and his samisen. Without a look back, he vanished into the night, to reclaim his mind and his power in the growing darkness.

***

Dais had known, when he fled the Dynasty, that eventually Talpa would make him return. A part of him had even known that Anubis was the mostly likely agent to be sent in pursuit of him. After all, Talpa was the one who had arranged it such that Anubis and Dais knew each other’s weaknesses best.

Dais had been prepared, then, to lead Anubis on a merry goose chase, to purge the weakness he felt in the younger man’s presence by defeating him in the comparative safety of the mortal world, free from the Dynasty’s mind-numbing influences. He hadn’t, however, been prepared for the fact that, while Dais’ thoughts were clear once more, the air of the mortal world honed Anubis’ hunting senses as well.

He’d had too close a call in the forests of Hokkaido before fleeing south to Morioka. He’d given Anubis the slip in a small inn there before he’d finally concluded that he was tired of running. Besides, running wasn’t what spiders did best; they lay in wait, luring their prey into an inescapable trap.

Dais set his trap in a small Shinto shrine high in the mountains. The surrounding villages had told whispers of a powerful Oni who inhabited the shrine since before human memory. Dais didn’t find any Oni, but the rumors kept the mortals away while he waited for Anubis to find him.

Anubis had yet to disappoint him, and he didn’t disappoint on this occasion either. He found Dais just after sundown, and Dais almost didn’t hear the footsteps at first through the howling of the wind outside. The candles in the shrine flickered but held against the coming storm.

When Anubis stepped inside, he was met with darkness, however. The shrine was kept well enough by those who feared the wrath of the demon within, but Dais showed Anubis a vision of decay and misuse.

Anubis, somewhat to Dais’ surprise, had come in full armor. Dais could respect that; Anubis knew that this was more than the mere games they’d played in the past. Anubis’ kursari-gama hung at his side, however. While he was prepared for a fight, he didn’t expect one. That could work to Dais’ advantage.

Anubis’ boots echoed loudly against the wooden floor of the shrine. His eyes flicked back and forth behind the holes in his mask. “I know you’re here,” he finally announced with that infuriating insouciance of his.

Dais showed himself, along with the pinpoints of candlelight that surrounded him. It was a calculated risk and one he’d debated for some time. However, half the power of illusions was the fact that every so often they showed the truth. If Anubis believed Dais himself to be a shade, then Anubis would just be all the more likely to look elsewhere for the real attack.

“That was…simple.” Anubis’ eyes narrowed at where Dais sat on the far bench, fingers gently tuning his samisen. He’d chosen to go unarmed, as well – anything to throw Anubis off-balance, at this point.

“Too easy?” Dais asked, unconcerned, and tested the first string. A woeful sound echoed through the small room, caught the resonance of the wind, and was washed away in the oncoming storm. The first drops of rain fell, almost as if responding to that note.

Anubis came to stand before him, still fully armed. “Master Talpa requests your presence,” he insisted.

“Of course he does,” Dais agreed.

“I informed him that you had not turned traitor.”

“Did you?” That was interesting. Anubis was hardly one to put his own honor at risk for the sake of another. “You’re in trouble if I have, then, aren’t you?”

Anubis smiled behind his mask. “You haven’t. I know you.”

“That’s quite impressive, given that I’m not even sure I know myself anymore,” Dais countered. He twanged the second string of samisen and looked up at Anubis fully for the first time. “Do we really need the armor?” He quirked one brow skeptically.

Anubis shrugged elegantly. “You’ve taught me to be cautious.”

“Hmm,” Dais plucked the third string. It was too taut, and the note sounded discordant around them. Outside, a boom of thunder crashed throughout the sky.

Anubis tensed visibly. “You’re coming with me,” he announced in an authoritative voice.

Dais didn’t respond but to retune the final string, producing an achingly pure note this time.

“I won’t fail in my mission, Dais.” Anubis sounded frustrated. “Especially not now.”

“You’ll always come for me?” Dais teased.

Anubis growled and stepped forward. “Let’s go.” His armored hand caught the edge of Dais’ samisen.

Dais closed his eye as the last piece of his trap clicked into place, and Anubis’ finger brushed that third string. Taut and ready, the fine strand of spider’s silk snapped and exploded, unleashing the full snare of Dais’ web. Anubis had only a split second to try to lash out before sticky, tangled webs wrapped around him, binding his arms and legs.

Anubis’ one blow landed only an inch for Dais’ right ear. He could hear the air rush by him, even through his closed eyelids and the rumbling of the storm.

When Dais opened his good eye once more, it was all over. Anubis was struggling in vain against the web that held him helplessly in mid-air. With every twist and pull, he tangled himself hopelessly further. Talpa had told Dais that Anubis’ weakness was his arrogance, and it had proven true. Even in full armor, Anubis was at his mercy now, and Dais hadn’t raised so much as a finger. It was a beautiful vision: Anubis tied spread-eagled within the spider’s web, trapped by his own foolhardy nature.

Calmly, Dais rose to his feet.

Anubis glared at him.

“Before you can accuse me of it: Yes, I do know that I couldn’t beat you in a fair fight,” Dais commented, standing before Anubis and lightly brushing the spider’s web that bound his left wrist. The strands stuck to Anubis’ armor, holding him in place, but they recognized Dais’ fingers as those of their master and didn’t restrain him in the slightest. “That’s the whole point of not fighting fair.”

Anubis took a deep breath and stopped struggling, relaxing within the snare.

“You must admit that you are too hasty at times,” Dais continued, his fingers following the line of Anubis’ tunic up until they rested against the plates of Anubis’ mask. “You could learn quite a lot from patience.”

“Fine,” Anubis conceded with mild annoyance. “You win this round. It won’t do you any good, however. Unless you plan on killing me. And I hardly think you have the daring to do that.”

Dais’ hands found the seams of Anubis’ helmet, and he pulled it off. Anubis wore a thoroughly sour expression beneath it. He was breathtaking, nonetheless: eyes flashing, cheeks flushed, hair in disarray. “I don’t have the _will_ to kill you,” Dais corrected as he studied his captive.

A smirk curved Anubis’ lips as he realized the source of Dais’ distraction. “Then haven’t I won, even as your prisoner?” he retorted.

Dais didn’t answer; it was a bit too close to the truth for his liking. “You broke the string on my samisen,” he pointed out instead.

Anubis frowned at that.

“It’s only fitting,” Dais concluded, “that you should replace it.” Something about having Anubis like this filled Dais with power and certainty that he’d been lacking ever since he’d first set sight on Anubis. It didn’t feel dangerous to touch Anubis like this, to trace the line of his jaw and run his fingers through the fine silk of Anubis’ hair.

Anubis winced as Dais tugged out one strand. Dais studied the long, red hair between his fingers and then returned to his samisen. It wasn’t like Anubis to abide in silence, but he just watched as Dais threaded the red hair in to replace the broken string. Anubis’ hair fit perfectly, through a magic Dais didn’t himself understand.

“How did you do that?” Anubis finally asked softly.

“I don’t know. For all I can remember, maybe I conjured the thing out of thin air.” Dais shrugged and ran his hand over the strings: two an iridescent white, and one that brilliant, fiery red. It all felt as though it meant something, although what that was was beyond even Dais’ grasp.

“It’s solid,” Anubis scoffed. “Your power only creates mirages, pale imitations.”

Dais couldn’t argue with that. He turned back to Anubis. “Do you ever feel,” he began carefully, “that you don’t understand your power at all? That, as strong as you become, there’s something holding you back, keeping you from…” He frowned. “Something more. There has to be something more…”

Anubis looked at him in shock and maybe even a little fear. And, in that moment, Dais felt as though he knew everything, all of Anubis’ secrets. Anubis had felt the exact same thing Dais had, the tug of a greater power at the edge of his consciousness, and it terrified him just as much as it had Dais. Anubis didn’t know where the game between them was going any more than Dais did. The face Anubis wore in Talpa’s throne room each day was as much an illusion as any Dais had ever created. The man he looked at now was real and true, and knowing that gave Dais more power than he’d ever thought imaginable.

The haze that the Dynasty created around his mind dissipated for one moment, and all his confusion surrounding Anubis vanished with it:

 _I love him._

It shouldn’t have been possible. Nothing so clean and pure as love should be able to come to life in the heart of Talpa’s realm. Yet, somehow, the impossible had occurred, and that made everything else that had happened to Dais that much less frightening.

 _I love him. And with that power I can do anything._

Dais’ palm cupped Anubis’ cheek, and he watched long lashes flutter closed. Anubis was as moved by this moment as he was, it seemed. “I’ll come back,” Dais promised. And then he leaned in and brushed an impossibly chaste kiss against those slightly parted lips. Anubis hissed in surprise in response. “I’ll come back,” Dais repeated, “and I’ll tell Talpa that you’re on your way, as well.”

Anubis’ eyes snapped open at that. “Let me out of this,” he insisted, tugging at the web that bound him once more.

Dais smiled an enigmatic little smile. “Get out of them yourself,” he retorted, gathering his samisen. “I’ll tell Talpa you’re tying up some loose ends.”

“ _Dais_!” Anubis hissed in annoyance.

“A little patience, and it shouldn’t take you more than an hour,” Dais grinned.

“I’m going to get you for this.” But Anubis was grinning as well.

“Good luck,” Dais laughed and vanished once more.

***

The war, as all wars must, changed everything.

Dais thought that if the Dynasty hadn’t invaded the mortal realm, he and Anubis could have gone on as they had been for the rest of eternity. But Talpa’s ambitions would not be stopped, and the tireless battle had begun.

Those first days were good, when victory seemed assured. Even after Anubis’ first battle with the Ronin Warriors, the Dynasty was on the rise, and Anubis was in high spirits. Anubis’ first defeat, however, marked the downfall of everything Dais had come to care about.

If they’d all thought that Talpa favored Anubis before, now he set about in what seemed a deliberate attempt to torment the leader of his Warlords. Anubis had won one spectacular victory and suffered one crushing defeat; Sekhmet, on the other hand, suffered defeat after defeat. Yet Talpa ignored Anubis’ pleas and honored Sekhmet with command of the Dynasty armies again and again.

Around this time, Anubis became obsessed with Ryo of the Wildfire. Dais helped bandage and re-bandage the burns Anubis had suffered in that volcano, and all the time Anubis’ rage was directed at the Ronin who had defeated him. Dais knew what it was to be the focus of that single-minded stubbornness, but now he had lost it to a younger, more beautiful man. At nights, Dais wondered sometimes whether he’d become obsessed with Wildfire as well. Half of him wanted the boy’s head on a platter to present to Anubis, and the other half wanted Anubis to bring _him_ Ryo’s mangled corpse in apology, so that things could go back to the way they had been.

But Anubis’ wrath just continued to grow, and with it his spirit continued to wither. Dais had always worried how Anubis would handle defeat; it was about as poorly as he’d imagined. Talpa, however, seemed to delight in the game and drove Anubis to deeper and deeper agonies in a series of desperate attempts to achieve enough power to destroy Wildfire once and for all.

Dais had played his samisen softly in the gardens those nights, trying to guide Anubis back to the chords of truth that Dais sometimes struck, but Anubis’ path was no longer Dais’ own. The string of Anubis’ hair seemed to fall flat more and more, the wider the gulf became between them.

It had all been building, but not even Dais could predict the form Anubis’ breakdown would finally take.

One cold morning, he, Sekhmet, and Kale were summoned to the throne room, and Dais’ heart sank because he knew what must have happened. Stealing himself up for news of Anubis’ death, he was completely blind-sighted by the actual mission: Anubis hadn’t died; he had turned _traitor_.

It went against everything Dais had ever known of Anubis.

It was, in short, impossible.

There was nothing to be done with Sekhmet and Kale with him, but personally Dais thought that he’d have better luck trying to convince Anubis on his own.

“Come with me,” he whispered into the cool morning air. In a way, it was the exact opposite of all those years ago when Talpa had sent Anubis after Dais.

For a moment Anubis looked torn, and it was the first time the thought occurred to Dais that maybe Anubis loved him in return. But something fundamental in Anubis had changed, and he held his head high and shook his head no.

After that, things were well out of Dais’ hands, and Sekhmet’s deranged glee and Kale’s cold fury put a quick end to Anubis’ rebellion.

When they took Anubis back, bound and captured, he didn’t say a word, just met Dais’ gaze confidently the entire time. There was something unnerving in Anubis’ eyes, something Dais had never seen before. The closest had been that day when Anubis had come for him in the shrine, and Dais had seen Anubis’ mind released from the Dynasty prison for the first time.

Dais held his tongue when Anubis was consigned to the lair of the netherspirits and thus to almost certain madness. It wasn’t a prison to be visited lightly but one day, when the battle was coming ever closer and the Ronins seemed far too near to victory, Dais braved the vile pits.

Anubis, somehow, was only a fraction of the man he’d once been, yet so much stronger at the same time.

His eyes, glazed and unfocused, turned away from Dais as he approached. Around them, the spirits swirled and watched but kept from ripping through Anubis’ psyche in deference to Dais’ presence.

Dais held Anubis’ chin in place and offered him water from the cup he’d brought. Anubis’ lips were dry and cracked, but still he only allowed the water to wet his lips before he jerked his head away. The spirits had the power to strip souls and drive even the strongest of men insane; Dais wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the water of this place was tainted as well. It was obviously a lesson Anubis had learned well in his attempts to resist the torture.

“This is madness,” Dais finally concluded with a sigh.

“Not yet.” Anubis smiled almost serenely to himself, his eyes shut.

“You don’t believe I’m real.”

Anubis’ brow furrowed as he considered that. “It doesn’t matter if you’re real or not,” he finally decided. “If you’re not, you’re here to drive me mad. If you are, you’re here to convince me to rejoin Talpa’s army, which is the same thing as madness.”

Dais sighed. “They’re going to kill you. You’re going to die for nothing.”

“I’m going to die, forcing Talpa to waste his resources torturing me to the very end and keeping him distracted from defeating the Ronins,” Anubis countered.

There was a certain brilliance to Anubis’ insanity; Dais had to give him that. “After all your talk of loyalty,” Dais chided him, “the very notion that _you_ should turn traitor—”

Anubis’ eyes snapped open. “Loyalty must be earned,” he insisted.

“Talpa gave you power.”

“Talpa gave me nothing.”

Dais staggered back, his breath caught in his throat. The sound of those words felt like poison in his brain, and he wondered for a moment whether the spirits had chosen to work their machinations on him as well.

Anubis’ gaze met his, steady and unflinching. “You feel it, Dais. I know you do. Even as a loyal servant of the Dynasty, your soul will be stripped from you piece by piece. Talpa cares nothing for us; we are vessels to be used and destroyed at his whim. Our only chance is—”

The chains that bound Anubis came to life, electrifying and wracking his body with pain. He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth but didn’t even let out the smallest cry at the agony that must have been coursing through his limbs.

Dais backed away from the torment of the man before him, from the words that were so far beyond madness that they almost sounded…

 _Sane._

“Don’t let him…” Anubis whispered through the pain. “Please, Dais… Don’t let him win.”

Dais was supposed to be able to tell the difference between truth and lies better than any of them. In that moment, however, he was completely lost. The notion that Anubis could have uncovered such a fundamental truth after spending only one day under the control of the Ronins was preposterous; at the same time, something of what Anubis was saying struck a chord deep inside Dais. Either route Dais took would be a betrayal – either of his Master or of Anubis. So Dais did what he’d done far too often of late, and ran.

***

When things were inverted and the world seemed in disorder, Dais often liked to hang upside-down in his web. Anubis had once rather cheekily informed him that all that blood running to his brain could be better served running someplace else. Dais had chuckled at that suggestion in the spirit it was offered and continued to dangle from the ceiling for a good hour or two for the sole purpose of annoying Anubis.

Now, the world truly had been overturned, and Dais could barely think through it all.

Talpa had turned on them all, stolen their powers to restore his own body. Dais had no doubt that had Wildfire not defeated Talpa that day, they all would have perished, Warlord and Ronin alike. But then Talpa _had_ been defeated, the Dynasty had lost all its ground, and suddenly they were trapped in the Netherworld once more. Talpa’s army had gone overnight from being an unstoppable force to struggling to hold the castle walls. Anubis was gone, freed from the Dynasty prisons and officially defected to the other side. And Dais stood at a crossroads, as it seemed he always did these days.

They were also taking orders from a little girl. That always made things harder to swallow.

Things were unraveling ever faster, and the fact that Anubis seemed to know the way things were going and Dais didn’t was driving Dais slowly up the wall.

Talpa’s control over his Warlords was both slipping and growing at the same time: the netherspirits were now given free reign to rake through Dais’ mind and harvest his powers and any potentially treasonous thoughts, but at the same time he’d never had the freedom to sneak out to the mortal realm like this during Talpa’s first invasion of Earth.

It was almost strange to see the mortal world in its natural state now, after a year of Dynasty occupation. Everything was bright and green and alive, and the people lived carefree. They were even smiling, completely oblivious as Dais swept past them hidden beneath layers of illusions. It was surreal to see a world like this; he hadn’t encountered anything of the sort for as long as he could remember, except for that one time he’d fled the Dynasty with Anubis on his trail. Already that seemed like a millennium ago. Knowing how time passed – or didn’t pass – in the Netherworld, it was entirely possible that it _had_ been a millennium.

He finally found Anubis and the humans he was protecting outside Toyama. There was almost something obscene about the fact that Anubis had taken over the old monk’s position. If ever there was a body that begged for passions – rage, pleasure, and touch – it was Anubis’. But Anubis, it seemed, had foregone it all. Dais wondered sometimes whether the spirits really had driven Anubis mad during his imprisonment.

Dais had never quite been clear on what he’d do once he found Anubis. Intelligence on one’s enemy was always valuable, of course. And, Dais admitted only to his innermost self, it had been far too long since he’d gazed upon the aristocratic tilt of Anubis’ head and the way his lips pursed ever so slightly when he was deep in thought.

It had never occurred to him that Anubis would be watching back.

Frankly, Dais had become a bit complacent with his powers of late. His illusions had grown exponentially, so that it took nothing more than the slightest of thoughts to ensnare his opponent’s senses. That night that he’d first fooled himself with the ethereal vision of Anubis was only the beginning. His enemies now chased after ghosts, real in all but their physical force, and more than once he’d twisted the mind of the Ronins to his will. It had been far, far too long since anyone had seen through his tricks.

Now, however, Anubis looked right at him, through veils and mirages, to where Dais’ breath caught in his throat and his heart beat in his chest. Dais was so unnerved that he didn’t even bother to try to use the weakness of Anubis’ mortal allies against him. Anubis sent them away, and Dais let them go because he wanted to be alone with Anubis in the first place.

“It’s been a long time,” Anubis said to the deception of thin air that surrounded Dais.

Dais split through the web and revealed himself. “Too long,” he agreed. Any battle there was between them was over almost before it had even begun. But Dais, of course, had not come to win Anubis by force.

“You can’t have come to bring me back.” Anubis shook his head.

“You said you’d always come for me. I can only return the favor.”

Anubis sighed, his eyes cleverly obscured by the brim of his hat. Dais had the irrational urge to rip it off him just then, to expose the wild, furious creature he’d once known. Anubis was far too aloof now, secure in his power and self in a way that Dais could never really dream of. Somewhere along the way Anubis had matured, and suddenly it was Anubis who saw the secrets that Dais missed.

“I will come for you,” Anubis finally said, “but not in the way you think. When I come, I come to free you.”

“This again?” Dais hissed in frustration.

“Talpa has blinded you.” Anubis reached out, and his knuckles barely brushed the eye-patch that covered Dais’ left eye. It was an intimacy Dais wouldn’t have allowed with any other. “Your will is not your own.” Just as slowly and surely, he pulled his hand back, and Dais ached at the loss of contact.

“I don’t know what they’ve done to you,” Dais shook his head, fighting the strange sensations churning inside him, “but I will have you back.”

Anubis looked sad at that. “It would be easier if we could be that way again,” he conceded. “Easier, although not better.”

Something in Anubis’ manner infuriated Dais just then. Anubis spoke with an authoritative wisdom that should never come from one so young. “You will succeed in your task at the cost of your life,” Dais warned.

Anubis smiled softly, a ghost of the smirk Dais had once known. “Most likely,” he agreed. “But I think I can accept that, so long as others are freed.” He looked at Dais out of the corner of his eye almost coyly.

“I’m not the traitor,” Dais insisted, because at that point it was all he had to hold onto.

“Yet you rail against the only thing you know to be true.”

It was the closest Anubis had come to admitting that the tension that swirled between them was still mutual. “That’s why I need you to come back with me.” Dais held out one hand in a gesture far more vulnerable than he would have liked.

Anubis studied him for a moment. Dais didn’t think he imagined the sadness in Anubis’ eyes when he shook his head. “Ask me again,” he requested, “when this war is over, and either you have regained your soul or I have lost mine.”

“You speak in nothing but riddles these days,” Dais complained.

“Because that is the only way to approach the truth in times like these,” Anubis answered enigmatically.

“Fine,” Dais snapped, thoroughly disgusted with the whole affair, “when Talpa is triumphant and you are brought before him in chains, we can bemoan your fate together.”

Anubis made no sound, but Dais got the irritating impression that the younger man was laughing at him. “Just remember,” he advised, “you once told me you were at the verge of something so much greater. Just around the corner were hidden depths to your power that you never imagined.”

“Talpa has unleashed that power now,” Dais insisted.

Anubis laughed. “Talpa hasn’t even scratched the surface. He bends your power to destruction, but who knows whether that is its ultimate realization?”

“I think your power has finally gone to your head.”

“It was in the music, was it not?” Anubis asked instead. “Where you felt the power that not even you could understand?”

“Talpa returns.” Dais hissed. “His army is restored, and he will take his vengeance.”

Anubis sobered at that. “I have no doubt that he’ll try.”

“I don’t want to fight you.”

“I don’t want to fight anyone,” was Anubis’ reply.

It wasn’t something Dais could understand at all.

Had their positions been reversed, Dais would never have let Anubis go. He couldn’t comprehend that: having all the power in a battle, yet letting the enemy escape. He wanted to believe that it was because Anubis had gone soft, but secretly he suspected that it was quite the opposite. Somewhere along the way, Anubis had found a source of strength that Dais could only dream of.

Dais returned to the Dynasty more overturned that he had been before. Anubis seemed to have all the answers, but they were hidden from Dais by an impenetrable shadow. If there was any truth to what Anubis said, then music should be the key, but when Dais played his samisen, that red string just ached with the same longing that Dais himself felt.

It was all the more infuriating that Anubis’ string rang the truest of them all.

Tossing the instrument aside in disgust, Dais turned back to the only thing he knew. The Dynasty, power, and the final battle awaited, and his deceptions were more necessary now than ever before.

***

The trouble with enlightenment was that it always came too late.

Dais had imagined the end in a thousand different guises, but somehow this particular eventuality had never occurred to him. Perhaps it was because of the spell the netherspirits had held him under for so long. He could understand now exactly what Anubis had seen that day when the old monk had first freed him. Some part of Dais had been aware that his mind was being controlled all along, but until that control had been lifted, those thoughts had never been able to fully come to the surface. It was a revelation and a horror all at once, because he knew then that Anubis had been right all along, and Dais’ struggles against him these past few years had been in vain. Dais would have given almost anything now to have those years back, now that he knew what the end would bring. Anubis had finally freed his mind, indeed, but freedom was a terrible price that Dais hadn’t even fully conceived of until now.

When Anubis had first broken free of the Dynasty, Dais had fallen under the misapprehension that Anubis had been killed in battle. But when Dais finally escaped Talpa’s shackles, it didn’t even occur to him that Anubis wouldn’t be waiting for him.

Many mortal men’s lifetimes had passed while Anubis and Dais had struggled back and forth, and now that it was over, and they were all free, Anubis wasn’t even there to stand beside him.

Dais felt a momentary presence beside him, and Kale coughed uncomfortably. “I know that you two were…something,” he offered gruffly before leaving Dais to his own thoughts.

Everything was like that now. All of the former Warlords were awkward in their own skin since they’d awakened from a nightmare that had lasted millennia. In the end, it showed how little they had really _lived_ during that time that Kale didn’t even know what Dais and Anubis had had together. To Kale’s credit, however, Dais wasn’t quite sure what they’d had, either.

All throughout the Netherworld now, life blossomed anew. It reminded Dais of that first day in the gardens when the cherry blossoms had been falling and Anubis had tried to seduce him. New life meant inevitable death. He wondered at himself that, when the rest of the Dynasty was celebrating their newfound liberty, all Dais could focus on was the one warrior who’d sacrificed himself to give it to them all.

He ended up in the cherry grove with the only reminder he had left of Anubis. The buds were just starting to form, fresh and new and as far from death as anyone could imagine. Dais sat at the base of the one of the trees, and he liked to think that it was the same tree he’d sat beneath all those years before, but he couldn’t be sure.

In a way, things were complete again. Even Anubis’ absence was replaced by the lone red string on Dais’ samisen. It still played beautifully, strong and sure and as fine as the day Dais had first plucked that hair.

Dais closed his eyes and played until he thought his heart would burst. He could hear the breath of wind in the leaves and smell the scent of things growing and, just on the last note, the brush of something impossibly gentle against his cheek.

But then, at that last note, so many things happened at once that Dais almost couldn’t process them all.

The final chord stretched pure and resonant for a moment before the wind took over for it. In that moment, the thread of Anubis’ hair snapped, and suddenly Dais wasn’t playing the music anymore, but something much larger.

His good eye snapped open, and he blinked at the mirage that now stood before him. Of course, it wasn’t the first time he’d seen Anubis like this, a specter created by his deepest desires.

“It wasn’t enough that you died?” Dais asked bitterly. “Now you have to haunt me from beyond the grave, too?”

Anubis smiled coyly, and it was a smile Dais knew from long ago. In recent years, Anubis had turned untouchable, like there was something holy shining from within. The Anubis before Dais now seemed very real and human, the way Dais had known and loved him. It just made the illusion that much crueler, because Dais could not forget even for a moment that this was all a lie.

“I still say you plot too much,” the mirage of Anubis laughed.

“And I still say that you were a fool. That, and you always had a death wish.” Dais sighed. “You can hardly deny the latter now.”

“I suppose not,” Anubis agreed, and then more softly: “I did also tell you that I’d always come for you.”

“You lied.”

“And when have I ever lied to you?” Anubis countered. “Everything I’ve told you has come to pass.”

“You never warned me I’d lose you,” Dais retorted angrily. Arguing with an illusion he’d created was thoroughly pointless, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. The image before him infuriated him just as much as the real Anubis always had. “Or was that what all the cryptic warnings were about? You were trying to prepare me for your death?”

“I was trying to prepare you for my _life_ ,” Anubis corrected, holding out one hand.

Dais’ fingers tightened around the neck of his samisen and the frayed remains of Anubis’ hair there. It had been the one thing that he’d had left of the man he had loved, and now it was broken. The illusion of this facsimile was meager compensation. At least he could touch that hair…

“You always were too stubborn for your own good.” Anubis sat back on his heels and looked thoroughly frustrated.

“I could say the same of you.”

Anubis grinned. “We always were well-matched.”

“We were,” Dais agreed sadly, fingering the broken end of Anubis’ hair. When he looked up again, it was with newfound determination. “What do you want?”

“You,” came the simple answer.

“You’re not real.”

“Are you so sure?”

“You died,” Dais insisted. “And I create lies. That’s always been my curse.”

The doppelganger of Anubis dropped his eyes to where Dais fingered the last hair of his human counterpart. “Talpa used you to create lies,” he began slowly. “But did it never occur to you that, in the right hands, your power could create truth, as well?”

And that was just too much for Dais to take. He thrust his samisen aside and reached out to pass his fingers through the deceitful throat of the mirage before him. For one precarious moment, the distance between them vanished to nothing.

And then Dais’ fingers closed around flesh and blood.

Anubis caught Dais’ wrist in a very real grasp and pulled Dais further in to him. “You always feared that your power held hidden, horrifying depths. It seems they are more wonderful than frightening.”

Dais felt the thump of Anubis’ heartbeat in the pulse of his throat. Anubis’ fingers were warm and solid around his arm. As he watched, his thumb reached up and brushed the curve of Anubis’ smiling lips. “Illusions have no substance,” he repeated to himself in disbelief.

“Do you believe me now?” Anubis, hopeless, infuriating creature that he was, was actually _teasing_ Dais.

Dais felt a moment of overwhelming giddiness, and the sort of dizziness that he only experienced after he’d trained himself to the point of exhaustion. Without his even realizing it, the power had seeped out from his very bones, leaving him exhausted in the arms of his latest creation. He’d never felt this depleted in all his life, and he’d never cared less.

“You’re real,” he breathed in realization.

“And you’re about to faint on me,” Anubis joked.

“You’d better not die, then,” Dais concluded. “I’m not sure I have it in me to do this again.”

“I’m not sure I have it in me to die again,” Anubis agreed.

Dais had thought the world was complete before, but now it was truly so. Everything had come full circle. Dais had taught Anubis to come into his full power, and Anubis had taught Dais the same. Dais wasn’t sure where that left them now. Equals, perhaps, with neither of them the guide on the journey to come but both travelers together. It was a terrifying and exhilarating idea all at the same time.

Dais’ fingers reached out and caught in Anubis’ hair, pulling their lips together after far too long. It was everything that kiss in the shrine had been, and everything that it _should_ have been as well. Anubis’ mouth tasted of the freshness of spring and the promise of summer storms. And now, free from Talpa’s control once and for all, there was nothing to stop Dais from taking everything that he’d always wanted. Anubis’ sigh against his lips let Dais know only too well that on this point they were in perfect harmony.

They kissed on the grass beneath the cherry tree, intertwined forever in the ultimate power Dais had unlocked. Eternity and a new era of peace lay stretched out before them, a road they would travel together in the years to come, a haunting melody so strange yet achingly familiar that it vibrated through their very bones.

And, all the around them, the Dynasty burst into beauty and life once more, as if awaking from a dream of a thousand years.


End file.
